Governor-elect Murphy campaigned on an ambitious progressive agenda that included such crowd pleasers as free community college for all, more affordable housing, increased school funding, lower property taxes, pension solvency and ponies for all!

It's interesting that Murphy promised so many things he knew he couldn't deliver when he didn't have too. This race was never close. Murphy was unchallenged in the primaries (basically) and the general election (basically). Guadango chose a strategy that cast her as a junior varsity Trump in a state where Trump lost, badly. All Murphy had to do was show up and not swallow his tongue and he was going to win by six points. Instead he looked up every progressives' Amazon wishlist and started promising chickens in every pot.

Murphy spent the entire campaign writing checks the treasury can't cash without massive tax hikes or the sudden discovery of massive gas and oil reserves underneath Bayonne. That discrepancy may become problematic four years from now when he's running for re-election and universal community college is still a bullet point on a white board.

Murphy's Democratic surrogates have spent the few days following his victory quietly lowering expectations and walking back some of the more exorbitantly priced items on his agenda by firmly affixing the "eventually" label. Hopefully he keeps those campaign promises handy because he'll need them four years from now when he has to promise them all over again.